Book Information

In America is based on a true story. It tells the story of a Polish actress named Maryna Zalewska, who travelled in 1876 with her family and a group of Poles to California to found a 'utopian' commune. The commune fails and Maryna returns to the stage, successfully but as an 'American', having sloughed off the skin of her older, European self. In America is a tale about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the fate of idealism and the world of the theatre.

 

 

Susan Sontag was born in New York and grew up in Arizona and California. Her first novel, The Benefactor was published in 1963 and she has published many works since, including the novels Death Kit and The Volcano Lover; I, Etcetera, a collection of stories; several plays and works of non-fiction. Her non-fiction works include On Photography, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Among her several awards are American Academy Ingram Merrill Foundation Award (1976), National Book Critics Circle Award (1977) and the Academy of Sciences and Literature Award (Germany, 1979). In America won the National Book Award 2000. She lives in New York City.